Canada’s universal healthcare system guarantees that every citizen receives equal access to care. In order to enforce such equality, Canada made it illegal for a person to spend his own money on private care. Doctors who provide medical care outside of the Canadian state system are therefore breaking the law.

But that might be changing. Canada’s Supreme Court recently opened the door for Quebec’s citizens to pay for private care outside the socialized medicine system:

Canada’s Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Quebec law that banned private insurance for services covered under Medicare, a landmark decision that could affect the country’s universal health-care system.

The justices took a year to rule on a case that began in 1997, when George Zeliotis, an elderly Montreal man, tried to pay for hip replacement surgery rather than wait nearly a year for treatment at a public hospital.

[...]

Although the ruling was made on the Quebec law, it likely will affect other Canadian provinces that forbid residents from buying private health care insurance for treatment under the country’s Medicare system.

Opponents of changes to Medicare claimed it could force Canada into a two-tiered health care system in which those who have deeper pockets get faster, better service from doctors who opt out of the public health-care program.

The logic of the opponents here is that everyone should be forced to be equal by preventing people from buying better care elsewhere if they can afford it. They’d prefer someone to go without medical care as long as equality is maintained.

The Canadian system is a perfect example of socialism in action: everyone receives equally crappy care, and everyone has to spend an equally long time on the waiting list in order to receive that care.

The 1984 Canada Health Act affirmed the federal government’s commitment to provide mostly free health care to all, including the more than 200,000 immigrants arriving each year, under a system called Medicare.

But the universal health-care system [...] has been plagued by long waiting lists and a lack of doctors, nurses and new equipment. Some patients wait years for surgery, MRI machines are scarce and many Canadians travel to the United States for medical treatment.

In most Canadian provinces, it is illegal to seek faster treatment and jump to the head of the line by paying out of pocket for public care. Private health clinics have sprouted up even though they are technically illegal, though the provincial governments tend to look the other way.

This article, which appeared in London’s Guardian, also sports a little editorializing from the writer, who asserts that Canada’s system is “considered one of the fairest in the world.” Precisely who considers the Canadian system fair is not stated; the writer just assumes everyone agrees. I bet that the people who spend months and years waiting for procedures that they could have today if only they lived in the United States would not consider the system fair.